Women in Tech: Meet Alisha Dattani, Founder and CEO of FMXA

We’re hosting an exciting Women In Tech event to celebrate International Women’s Day with Triangirls, a supportive female collective that is on a mission to empower women in both their personal and professional lives.

We will have a panel with some incredible women from the tech industry; we’re thrilled to introduce you to Alisha Dattani, CEO and founder of FMXA, who will be part of that panel. FMXA is an integrated marketing and PR agency that specialises in the technology sector. Alisha formed the agency after she left a career at a leading cyber security vendor. Prior to that, she worked in prominent roles for a wide range of leading VARs, distributors and vendors; a career path that has given her a uniquely comprehensive view of the challenges faced by IT vendors and their channel partners.

Alisha bought 20 years of experience of technology and channel marketing to her role at FMXA, an agency that she has nurtured from the beginning into an international player in just 5 years. She has strong leadership skills and an unwavering focus on best practices to ensure that FMXA continues to thrive at the forefront of marketing innovation and continually exceeds the expectations of its clients.

 

Diversity and inclusion within the tech world

Alisha agrees that it’s important there’s both diversity and inclusion within the tech industry, sharing that “Information technology was last year the sector with the second highest proportion of hard-to-fill vacancies, according to the the Employers Skills Survey and the Tech industry is only forecasted to grow,  Cyber Security specifically accounts for 180 Billion dollars of revenue globally with forecasts of over 3.5 million unfulfilled jobs in the next couple years.” This is causing a tremendous skills shortage in the industry that Alisha believes diversity can greatly aid this issue.

Inspirations

We were keen to know who Alisha admired within the industry; who she has looked up to and who has inspired her to continue her dream of working in the tech world, to which she named Sheryl Sandburg. She goes on to explain why: “I’m hugely inspired both by her journey to her place on the Facebook board and her ability to balance her family life with her career.”

Businesses need to take action

Alisha describes how fortunate she feels to have worked with inclusive businesses for the entirety of her career and noted that they’ve “bent over backwards to attract and retain the right talent, regardless of gender”. She recalls her experience when she worked for Check Point UK and she was the first female employee to fall pregnant, explaining that “Far from working against me, the company built a maternity package just for me and were fully supportive during my return to work.”

Unfortunately, there are women who don’t experience the same level of inclusion and currently the rate in which women are leaving the tech industry is at an alarming 45% higher than their male counterparts. Alisha believes “the industry loses great female talent when women become mothers and I think flexible working and home working would encourage more mothers to come back to work.”

What can we do?

At FMXA, Alisha is making sure that these processes are in place and embedded in the culture. She describes to us how she believes that “work is something you do, not somewhere you go and we build mutual trust with our employees.”

We’re also on a mission to help change the issues raised and our Women In Tech event is a step in the right direction. During this event, we will share more about being an empowered woman in tech, more details surrounding diversity and inclusion and where you can find support as a woman in tech. Interested in joining us? Check out the event details and how we plan to work towards #ClosingTheGap.

Meet the rest of our panel

Joining Alisha on the panel, we have:

Charlotte Jee, Staff Writer for MIT Technology Review

Niamh Power, Mobile Engineer at Monzo

Sanchita Saha, CEO & founder of Shello

Rachael Grocott, Product Designer at Geckoboard and co-founder of Triangirls